Why Do Humans Value Music?

Author(s): Wayne D. Bowman

Source: Philosophy of Music Education Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 2002), pp. 55-63
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40327176
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Symposium
55
or even useful to attend to
(understand, appreciate,
etc.),
in order to derive a
potential
value is a variable
matter. Thus I don't need to be
intimately
familiar
with the conventions and conditions of ballet
(i.e.,
beyond my experience
with
physical
movement and
dance,
in
general)
to value
it;
but I will
certainly
value
it
differently
as a result of such
experience
-
though
not
necessarily
to
any
absolute sense of
advantage.
Thus, it is sometimes true that
'ordinary' (untrained)
listeners
enjoy (value)
their
experience
of music more
than a trained musician
-
one, who, for
example, may
cringe
at the church
choir, mistaking
it for a concert
chorus.
1 9. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality,
40-4 1 .
20. The
placements
of musics on this continuum can be
random or
might proceed according
to some
descrip-
tive
range
of status functions
(e.g., popular
to fine
art,
entertainment to
serious,
mundane to
profound, etc.).
Such
hypothesized
dialectics will
always
be
arbitrary
and
arguable.
21. I don't, on the other
hand, go
so far as to
suppose
that
such so-called
"pure," "aesthetic,"
or "disinterested"
meanings
amount to the disembodied
metaphysics
of
Beauty
or
Sublimity
claimed
by
various
(and compet-
ing)
traditional aesthetic accounts and thus
given lip-
service
by
musical esthetes as
testimony
to their
elevated sensibilities. Such
'right
results' for this
constituency (or
"taste
public,"
as social
psycholo-
gists
label
it)
are
simply
conditioned
by
the
particular
status function invoked
according
to the
predisposi-
tions of that kind of
Backgrounding. Aisthesis, then,
is a
process
or mode of
experience (of intentionality,
consciousness, valuing)
not a certain kind of
(i.e.,
aesthetic) product
or content
per
se.
22. A
lullaby
intended or used for
listening
alone will
also
require
certain other features that can
occupy
the
interests of listeners. As the function
changes,
so will
the criteria.
23. Take the case of a
classically
trained American
percussionist
who had studied a certain tradition of
African
drumming
in the US with a Master drummer.
While later
studying
African
drumming
in
situ,
the
student was asked on one occasion to leave the
ensemble
by
the individual for whom the music was
intended because his
participation
was
distracting
her
from the ancestor invocation the music was to serve.
It is
important
to observe in this
example
that "the
music" was not
simply
an
accompaniment
to an
otherwise non-musical social
purpose;
it was that
purpose
in toto. Furthermore,
the
musicking
was not
"for" the individual served in some
merely
instrumen-
tal or
contributory way;
she was
part
of "the
music,"
as were the rest of those in attendance whose role was
not
simply
that of audience or observer,
but was
participatory.
24. A
"good" performance
of a score
by
a school
group
will be
considerably
different than a
"good" perfor-
mance of the same score
by professional
artists. Thus
the status or
"goodness"
of the value is related in
part
to the use and is not some
strictly
aesthetic or even
artistic absolute. The
"goodness"
or excellence of
school
performance, then, is not
simply
determined
by
how
closely
it
approximates
or attains to
postulated
ideals or conventional criteria of aesthetic or artistic
excellence but
is, rather, importantly
related to its
situation
(function). Similarly, though, wedding
or
worship
music is not
judged simply by
how
closely
it
approximates
or attains such
singular
ideals of excel-
lence; it, too,
is situated and the conditions of excel-
lence that obtain in a concert hall
may
be
/appropri-
ate to the situatedness of a
particular wedding
or
worship.
25.
'Highest'
in terms of the aforementioned aesthetic
hierarchy.
26.
Unfortunately,
the
musically
unschooled make the
same erroneous
assumption
and remain
complacent
with the
easily gained
functions that music serves in
their lives.
Thus,
one function of music education can
be seen as the
posing
and
modeling
of other reward-
ing
functions
(values)
for music in
life;
to create a
status function for such
musicking
that students
aspire
to it and
practice
it as
part
of their
"good
life."
27. See Claire
Detels,
"Soft Boundaries:
Re-Visioning
the
Arts and Aesthetics" in American Education
(Westport,
CT:
Bergin
&
Garvey, 1999).
Why
Do Humans Value Music?
Wayne
D. Bowman
I
As I set out to address the
question
before
us,
I was struck
by
the
aptness
of
Wittgenstein's
observation that "a
philosopher's
treatment of a
question
is like the treatment of an illness."1
Something
about this
question
sets me
thinking
in
precisely
the
way Wittgenstein
seems to have had
in mind here. "Illness" is not the
issue,
of course:
The
question
is a reasonable
one,
and those who
have
posed
it are no doubt reasonable
people.
But
the
parallels
between
formulating
a
response
and
the
processes
of
diagnosing
and
treating
illness
are
intriguing.
The
physician
studies
symptoms
carefully, attempting
to
identify
the
underlying
disease of which
they
are
symptomatic.
Failure at
this
stage
leads to
mistreatment,
to treatment of
the
wrong illness,
or to treatment of
symptoms
56
Philosophy
of Music Education Review
only.
In
any case,
the
underlying
cause is ne-
glected.
The
patient's
health
may
fail to
improve,
or it
may
well deteriorate.
Similarly,
to
provide
an informed
response
to a
question
like
this,
one must understand
pre-
cisely
what is
being
asked-and what is
being
asked
may
or
may
not be evident in the
way
the
'symptoms present',
in the
way
the
question
is
formulated. The
problem posed may
well be
symptomatic
of
deeper
issues or concerns-of
implicit assumptions
the
respondent may
be
disinclined to
accept.
A
single
set of
symptoms
can be a manifestation of more than one illness
and
questions
like the one
posed
here
might
be
asked for
any
number of reasons.
To the
philosopher, questions
are
significant
concerns,
in
part
because of the subtle
ways they
constrain the kind of answer deemed relevant and
in
part
because
they imply
the kind of
strategy
"appropriate" responses
should
deploy. Thus, my
response
to the
question, "Why
do humans value
music?" will
begin,
in the
spirit
of the
philosophi-
cal
quest
for
truth, by questioning
the
question.
Of
what kind of
assumptions might
this
question
be
a
symptom?
Among
the first
things
one
might
want to
know before
embarking upon
a
philosophical
course of treatment for this
particular question
are
"Who wants to know?" and
"Why?" Or,
"To what
use is it intended the answer be
put?"
One
might
ask
why people
value
music,
for
instance,
in
hopes
that its answer would substantiate the need
for music education. But of course it could not do
that.
Making
a
compelling
case for music educa-
tion
requires
different
questions
and different
arguments,
or at least additional ones. The mere
fact that
something
is
valued,
even when it is
valued
widely, deeply,
and for
good reasons,
does
not
necessarily strengthen
the case for
teaching it,
especially
if
by teaching
one has in mind formal
instruction that is
part
of
general compulsory
education. One needs to show
that, among
other
things,
instructional
time, effort,
and
expense
have
a demonstrable
pay-off,
to show that
they yield
more of this
"good thing"
than is
generally
the
case without such instruction.
The other
problem
with
approaching
the
problem
from the
standpoint
of
advocacy
is that
the
purposes
of
advocacy
restrict the
range
of
acceptable
or
'appropriate' responses
in
ways
that
may
well inhibit
philosophical inquiry.
The
advocate wants answers that
affirm, persuade,
and
inspire,
answers that
appear
to validate the status
quo. Advocacy
thus eliminates at the outset a
range
of
potentially
viable answers
that,
while
perhaps
true and
insightful,
do not serve its imme-
diate instrumental ends. If our real concern is to
answer the
question
as
fully
as
possible,
I think it
important
to avoid
presuppositions
that
might
unduly
constrain our
response.
What kind of
presuppositions
does this
question
make? In the first
place
it makes for us
the
assumption
that humans DO value
music,
then
asks us to
explain why
that is the case. There is
nothing terribly wrong
with
this,
of
course,
since
it is
abundantly
clear that most humans do value
music in some
way
and to some
degree.
But value
comes in all kinds and
degrees.
It is
possible
to
value music and still have that value be of a lower
order than other
contenders,
so
that,
for
instance,
although
I value
music,
I
may
value other
things
more. So
explaining why people
value music does
not
necessarily,
or in and of
itself,
address the
issue of music education's
precarious
status in
contemporary
North American
society-if
that is
what is
hoped
for in an answer.
Again,
I do not
suggest
that humans do not
value
music, only
that
people
value all kinds of
things
for all kinds of reasons and that
relatively
few of those
things
so valued find their
way
into
the arena of formal
public schooling. Valuing
covers an
immensely
broad
range
and reasons for
valuing
are not
necessarily
reasons for
teaching.
Indeed,
it
might
even be the case that
people
value
music for reasons
quite
unsuited or
utterly
anti-
thetical to the aims and
purposes
of
schooling.
Asking why
humans value
music, then,
is an
interesting question
and one well worth
asking,
but we should not
necessarily expect
its answers
to buttress claims to the
importance
of music
education.
A more fundamental concern for me is the
way
the
question implicitly
seems to set humans
on one
side,
music on the
other,
and then to want
Symposium
57
to build a
bridge
between these two solitudes with
the idea of "value."
Admittedly,
this is more
implicit
than
explicit
in the
question,
but it is a
significant
issue for
me,
for reasons I
hope
to
make clearer in due course.
I have a further concern that
may
strike
some as
'picky' although
it is not
really
not so
picky
as it
may
seem at first
gloss.
The best
way
to
get
at it is
probably
to assert
bluntly
that no one
values
music-by
which I mean to underscore that
no one values all of
it,
all the time.1 If and when
people
value
music,
it is not "music"
they
value-the whole of it-but rather
particular prac-
tices and
particular
kinds of
engagement
in
particular
circumstances. I
certainly
do not value
all music. The music I value
varies,
often
widely,
a function
among
other
things
of the circum-
stances in which I find
myself.
The music I value
on one occasion I
may
not value on another.
Sometimes Beethoven is
just right
and other times
he is all
wrong.2 Moreover, becoming musically
educated has made it
quite
difficult for me to
value certain musics I otherwise
might
have. All
value,
I
submit,
is 'value for': it is not a durable or
internal
(or
"inherent" or
"intrinsic") possession
of some
thing
called music.
I trust it is evident where I am
taking
this.
The
question
we have been asked makes
assump-
tions that seem to
push my
answer in directions
with which I am not
entirely
comfortable and I
feel the need to resist.
Perhaps
most
notably,
it
seems to solicit a
single, definitive,
knock-'em-
dead answer. I am disinclined to offer one because
I believe
strongly
that music is not that kind
of
thing.
When we talk about music we stand on
fundamentally
human
ground,
because music is
fundamentally
human. With that comes all the
richness and
complexity
of the human condition.
And I believe that
people
value such musics as
they do,
when
they do,
for all kinds of
reasons,
reasons as numerous and
radically
diverse as there
are human uses to which musical
experiences
and
practices
can be
put.
We cannot
expect
to do
justice
to the
expansiveness
of musical value in a
single
evocative
phrase
of the kind that
might
fit
on a
bumper
sticker. Musics are
humanly
intended
meanings
embedded in human actions
and,
as
such,
it is
entirely likely
that
every
interest which
might
find
expression
in such actions will do so!3
Indeed,
as I
implied earlier,
some of the
reasons
people
value music
may
well involve
things
we
might
not
particularly
want to celebrate
or
encourage.
In is
important, then,
that our an-
swers be
open-textured4
We also need to resist the
assumption
that our answers should be of direct or
immediate use to music
education,
since
many
of
the reasons for which humans value music do not
require
or
necessarily
benefit from education.
Indeed,
as I
implied earlier,
some of the reasons
people
value music
may
well involve
things
we
would not
particularly
want to celebrate or en-
courage.
It is
important, then,
that our answer be
open-textured, capable
of
accommodating
the
multiplicity
and
diversity
of
ways
music can be
valued
(or not),
the remarkable number of
ways
there are to be musical.
Despite
these sincere
misgivings,
I do think
I understand the
general
intent of the
question
and
am
prepared
to hazard at least the
beginnings
of
an answer.
However, permit
me first to reformu-
late it in a
way
that alleviates or avoids at least a
few of the issues and concerns I have raised here.
Instead of
asking why
humans value
music,
let us
ask:
Why
do
people
seem to have such
affinity for
experiences
and activities that
are,
in some
way
or
other,
musical?
Or,
for short:
Why
are
people
musical?5
II
Note that
despite resemblances,
this is not
quite
the same
question
with which we
began.
In
fact,
it is instructive to note that the
question
originally put
to Bennett Reimer was also
subtly
different. The
question
first
posed was, "Why
is
music essential for all humans?" There is an
interesting progression
from this
original
form of
the
question
to the
way
it is
posed
in the title of
58 Philosophy
of Music Education Review
this
essay
and
finally
to the
way
I have reformu-
lated it here. Each seems to move us
progressively
away
from
advocacy,
and toward
philosophy
proper; away
from
defending
"what is" and toward
describing
it as
fully
as
possible; away
from
concern with
'
givens
'
and toward consideration of
what
might
be.
My
answer to
my
reformulated
question
begins
with the observation that
people
have such
affinities as
they
do because musical endeavors
are elaborations of basic human
tendencies, needs,
and
interests-things
we come
by naturally
and for
which we are more or less hard-wired.6 Note that
this
explanation begins
not with
pieces
of music
or musical
compositions-with
what
might
be
characterized as musical commodities or artifacts
-but rather with basic human
dispositions
which
are embedded in human action and interaction.
This
starting point
is
quite
deliberate. Various
tendencies and interests
beget
different kinds of
music and different kinds of musical
engagement,
whose values are functions of the
way they
serve
those tendencies and interests.
Thus,
humans are
musical for a host of
reasons,
none of which is for
all
purposes
better than all
others-any
more than
any single
human
tendency
can be
designated
utterly
definitive of the human condition.
Francis
Sparshott suggests
that
among
the
human tendencies of which music is an elabora-
tion are these:
knowing (an
interest in
exploring
the limits of the
given); gaming (a tendency
to
transform necessities into
values);
and
patterning
(a tendency
to
impose periodic
structure on the
particulars
of
experience).7
I think
Sparshott
is
right
in this and that these are
highly
useful obser-
vations.
However,
I think we should
probably
add
to his list at least three additional human interests
or tendencies that are elaborated in musical
expe-
rience: a human interest in
communicating
or
sharing meanings;
a human interest in
participa-
tion or
collectivity;8
and a human interest in
similarities and differences.
Among
the
things
these latter three tendencies have in common is
their
grounding
in human social
experience
and
interaction.9 As a
fundamentally
social
creature,
the human animal finds in musical
experiences
numerous and diverse means of
creating, sharing,
and
communicating meanings.
Music also satisfies a basic human interest
in
belonging, relating,
and
collaborating
with
others,
the interest Charles Keil and Steven Feld
memorably designate
"the
urge
to
merge."10
And
the human
tendency
to structure the world in
terms of similarities and differences manifests
itself not
only
in the "intramusical"
patterns
and
designs
to which
Sparshott
draws our attention.
These
processes
of
"saming
and
othering,"
the
logics
of
similarity
and
alterity,
find in music
important
cross-modal resemblances to
things
like
emotive
(expressive)
states and
bodily (gestural)
states.11
Finally,
because music often manifests
itself in collective
action,
its
collaborative,
participative
rituals
satisfy
this basic human
interest in social
togetherness
at the same time
they
serve to differentiate "us" from musical
others,
"them."
m
This is not the
place
to elaborate on these
points. However,
let us
acknowledge
that if these
interests and tendencies are indeed
humanly basic,
they
will
obviously
manifest themselves in all
manner of
ways,
not
just musically.
Human
tendencies can
help
us
explain why
we are drawn
to and take satisfaction in
things
like
music, then,
but
they
do not
yet
tell us
anything
that is
specific
to music.
They
do not tell us
why
our
affinity
for
music seems so much more momentous and
remarkable than non-musical
experiences
that
may
be informed
by
and stem from these same
basic tendencies and interests.
So I think we need to establish in our an-
swer a
place
of
prominence
for the distinct
phe-
nomenal
qualities
of sonorous
experience.
I do not
mean
just
its 'felt'
character,
that
vague,
inclusive
aspect
so
many
are inclined to call emotive or
emotional. I have in mind sound's
intimacy
and
refusal to remain at a
distance,
its
peremptory
nature,
the intrusiveness and
immediacy
that led
Kant to situate music at the bottom of his artistic
hierarchy
and call it an
'agreeable'
art rather than
a 'fine' one.12 We are hard-wired for sound and
with a directness
vividly exemplified by things
Symposium
. 59
like our startle reflex and our visceral
responses
to
noise.13 Musical
experience,
because of its distinc-
tive sonorous
roots,
is a
fundamentally
and inex-
tricably bodily
or
corporeal
event.14 It
is,
I have
argued elsewhere,
a "somatic semantic/'15 Put in
still another
way,
music has what
Shepherd
and
Wicke call a
"technology
of
articulation,"
a hard
link to the
body through
sound. This hard
link,
this
body-sound interface,
makes it an
important
part
of what makes music
utterly unique
in human
experience.
16
What these considerations
suggest
for our
"why?" question
is that one of the most
important
reasons
people
are musical is that such
experience
restores
unity
and wholeness to
body
and
mind,
drawing upon
human
powers
and
experiential
dimensions that lie dormant and
neglected
where
sound
figures marginally
or does not
figure
at all.
People
are musical because the
unique phenome-
nal nature of music
(because,
that
is,
of its sono-
rous
roots)
fosters
experience
with a richness and
complexity
found almost nowhere else in the
world.17
Being
musical is a function of one's
whole
being,
in marked contrast to the silent
spaces
that frame both the disembodied abstrac-
tions of rational
experience
and the detached
coolness of visual
experience-realms
in which we
seem to live
ever-increasing parts
of our lives.
Musical
engagements put
us in the world and in
our bodies like
nothing
else does.18
IV
But
people
are also musical
because,
as I
suggested
earlier, they
are social. Musical
experi-
ence serves in numerous and fundamental
ways
the
communal, participatory,
and communicative
needs and interests of a social human animal. This
obviously goes against
the
grain
of some
ways
we
have been
taught
to think about
music,
wherein
social interests and tendencies are to be
regarded
as extramusical.
They
are
not,
I
submit;
and
drawing
a solid
conceptual boundary
between the
musical and the social
(regarding
the social as a
kind of "contextual
envelope"
into which events
'purely'
and
'properly'
musical somehow
get
inserted) severely compromises
our
understanding
of the
significance
of musical
experience.
Music
is
inherently,
not
incidentally,
social. It
is,
as Keil
puts it,
our "last
great
source of
participatory
consciousness"19-not a mere
subj ective, apprecia-
tive
"response"
to a
musical-auditory
"stimulus"
and not he
product
of some localized brain state
or an hermetic act of
cognition.
Musical
meanings
and values are
fundamentally intersubj
ective
affairs and musics
play important
roles in
creating
and
sustaining
both individual and collective
identity.
The
experiential
musical field is a
performative field,
in which we are the music
while it lasts20-but whose
residues,
I hasten to
add,
remain
long
after its sounds have subsided.
From all this I think it also follows that
musical domains are
fundamentally
and
pro-
foundly
ethical
spaces,21
in that the musical field
is
only
sustained
through
our
complicity
with the
music "as
other,"
and with other
people.
It is a
ritual enactment-or better
yet,
achievement-of
identity.22 Clearly,
these claims
require
that we
dissolve the
boundary
between music and the
people
who make and use it. I
hope
it is
equally
clear that the dissolution of that
boundary
is
nothing
short of a moral
imperative. People
are
musical,
at least in
part,
because musical
experi-
ence meets their interests and needs as social
beings
and these interests and needs are
by
no
means less
significant
than those catered to
by
music's formal or
expressive
attributes.23
Now,
as
Dewey taught us,
not all
experience
is created
equal.
And what I would like to advance
here is that all the
foregoing-our cognitive pro-
pensities
and
predilections
as
humans;
the distinc-
tively corporeal
nature of sonorous
experience;
the
sociality
of musical
experience;
its role in
creating
and
sustaining identity (both
individual
and collective
)-intersect
in
experience
that is
musical in a
very special way. They converge
with
an
experiential immediacy,
a
potent
and
unique
sense of
living here-and-now,
in a
vivid, proces-
sually flowing present.
This contrasts
starkly
with
the calculus of technical
rationality
and the acts of
material
consumption
to which
contemporary
life
seems so determined to reduce us. Music restores
our human
powers
of
conception, perception,
sensation, emotion,
and action to their
original
60
Philosophy
of Music Education Review
state of
unity, dissolving
the obnoxious dualisms
in which we are forced to live our nonmusical
lives. In this
sense,
it
is,
I
submit,
a
primordial
'logos'.24
But it is at the same time a ritualistic
mode of
engagement through
which
people
consti-
tute
themselves, individually
and
intersubjec-
tively.
In
short,
the most
prominent
features of
my
answer to
"Why
are
people
musical?" are

music's
corporeality
or embodiment

music
'
s
sociality

music's ethical nature

music's
uniquely processual character,

music's vivid
experiential presentness
and

music's
deep
attachments to
identity.
But
having
made these
claims,
it is immedi-
ately necessary
to
qualify them,
because each
is,
after
all, contingent.
None
happens automatically.
Musics do not exist in the world in the
way
that
things
like rocks and trees do. As human construc-
tions that remain
deeply
embedded in human
social
discourse;
music has none of these
qualities
without our
complicity.
I have claimed that mu-
sic's
phenomenal uniqueness
is
largely
a function
of the
way
we are wired for
sound,
for instance.
But sound also manifests itself as
speech
and as
noise-experiences
that are in
many ways
antitheti-
cal to what most of us
regard
as music. The fact
that sound is but music's medium reminds us of
music's
fragility
and
elusiveness,
of how
easily
it
can
slip
over into noise. I
suspect
this is
yet
another reason that
many people
hold musical
experiences
of some kind or other in
high
esteem:
for
although
sound
claiming
to be music is
every-
where around
us, genuinely
musical
experience
with the
qualities
I have claimed here
may always
be in shorter
supply
than we would like.25
The claims I have made about the
unique-
ness of sonorous
experience
should not be mis-
taken as
attributing
to musical
experience
the kind
of essential
unity
I earlier wanted to
deny. Sound,
as music's
medium,
lacks
meaning
in
itself;
its
phenomenal qualities
can
support meanings
as
radically divergent
as a Mozart
Requiem
and the
popular
industrial music of Nine Inch Nails.
Likewise,
there are diverse
ways
of
engagement
and
multiple
musical uses to which these
qualities
of sound can be
put (some highly desirable,
others
highly undesirable).
There are times and circum-
stances in which
people
seek out musical
experi-
ence to savor
simply being
in musical sound and
space together;
but as
often,
what
people enjoy
is
the
way
music's
phenomenal qualities permeate,
qualify,
or transform other
undertakings.
We are
wrong
to
designate
such
experiences
"extramusical,"
for
surely they
are not
extramusical to those
engaged
in them. Nor
should we
presume
to
judge
for others where the
boundary
between music and non-music should be
drawn. I think it is
precisely
music's
capacity
to
insinuate itself
meaningfully
and
influentially
into
all manner
of experience
that accounts for its
extensive
presence
in human societies. Music IS
that kind
of thing.
V
In
closing
let me leave
you
with
Sparshott's
cogent insight
that music is "talk-like": an "im-
provised way
of
getting
from
place
to
place
in a
social
world,"
as he
puts
it.26 1 think there is a lot
of truth in this observation and
regret
that
space
permits
but a nod in its direction here. We do exist
in musical
experience
much as we exist in conver-
sation. In music we are "alone
together,"
each
participating differently
in an event whose
very
existence rests
upon
our ethical commitment to
achieving
and
sustaining intersubjective meaning.
Like
conversation,
music is a
slippery affair,
caught up
in
relationships
and attachments and
tacit
assumptions
that
always place
it at risk of
being misunderstood,
of
becoming inauthentic,
or
of
simply failing.27
It
proceeds successfully,
when
it
does, by
virtue of a kind of
flexibility, improvi-
sational
fluency,
and a
deep respect
for the contin-
gencies
of the situation at hand. We
slip
in and out
of
it,
understand and
misunderstand,
feel our
way
forward,
or circle
back,
or
pursue unanticipated
but
interesting tangents. Music,
like
conversation,
is the
exercise,
in the
moment,
of a kind of
practi-
cal
knowledge,
one that draws on
everything
that
Symposium 61
we
are,
even as it
shapes
who we are
becoming.
Why
do
people
value it?
Why
do
people
con-
verse?!28 For reasons that are as numerous and
radically
diverse as the uses to which music can
be
put. Why
are we musical? Because of the
way
sound
engages
the
body;
because we are
social;
because of the limitless
ways
these facts
map
onto
and enrich human
experience;
and because musics
are
potent
and
unique
vehicles for the construction
of our
personal
and social worlds.
The views I advance here do not constitute
the final word on these
important
issues. That is in
no small
part
because music is not the kind of
thing
for which there is or can be a final word.
We would do well to
stop treating
it as if it were.
Indeed,
failure to come to
grips
with the
implica-
tions of this fundamental musical truth
may
well
be one of the
greatest impediments
to
finding
a
satisfactory
answer to the
"Why?" question
we
have been
probing
here.
Recognition
and
accep-
tance of such facts as
contingency, sociality,
fluidity,
and
change,
are
fundamental,
I
submit,
to
a viable
philosophy
of
music,
to a viable
philoso-
phy
of music
education,
and to music
advocacy
efforts that
aspire
to achieve more than an affir-
mation of the status
quo. Thus,
while I
began by
questioning
the
sufficiency
of
any
answer to the
question "Why
do humans value music?" to a
justification
of music
education,
I will close
by
asserting
that a
carefully
considered answer is
clearly necessary. However,
central to that an-
swer,
whatever else it
may include,
must be the
conspicuous
facts of musical
plurality
and fluid-
ity,
the
contingency
and
multiplicity
of musical
value,
and music's
inextricably
social and ethical
nature.
NOTES
1 .
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe
(New
York: MacMillan
Publishing. 1976). 255.
2. In an
essay forthcoming
in David Elliott's Critical
Matters
(Oxford University Press)
I use a
quote by
Wendell
Berry
to make this
point
about
global
think-
ing: "Properly speaking global thinking
is not
possi-
ble. Those who have
thought globally
have done so
by
means of
simplification
too extreme and
oppres-
sive to merit the name of
thought."
"Out of Your
Car,
Off Your
Horse,"
The Atlantic
Monthly (February
1991)61.
3. I have
explored
this
aspect
of intenti
onality
in
my
"Sound, Sociality,
and
Music," Parts I & II. The
Quarterly
Journal
of
Music
Teaching
and
Learning,
Vol.3 (Fall 1994): 50-67.
4. See Francis
Sparshott
"Aesthetics of Music-Limits
and Grounds" in
Phillip Alperson's
What is Music?
(New
York: Haven
Press, 1986)
for elaboration of
this
important point.
5. This is so not
only
because of music's
profound
cultural and
stylistic plurality
and
diversity,
but also
because of the
contingency
of
any
and all value
claims we
might
wish to
make,
even for
particular
practices.
6. Note that one of the
things
this reformulation
attempts
to do is to dissolve the
implication
that there exists a
dichotomous
relationship
between music and
people,
a eao suDDOsedlv in need of brideine bv value.
7. This is
among
the
points
advanced and elaborated
by
Sparshott
in the seminal
essay
referred to in note
4,
above. I take
Sparshott's point
about the elaboration
of basic tendencies here but seek to
expand
it some-
what from the view he
advanced,
since his interest in
"listenable sound"
(see
note
8, below)
seems
subtly
to
favor
listening
above other
important
uses to which
people put
musical
engagements.
8.
According
to
Sparshott,
interest in
knowing
manifests
itself in
exploration
of the limits of listenable sound.
The
gaming tendency
transforms
humanly
emitted
sound from
symptoms
of some condition into
expres-
sive
representations
and
eventually
into sounds whose
production
has no
apparent point beyond
the interest
they present
in themselves. And
patterning,
of course,
transforms mere sounds into artifacts with recurrent
similarities
recognizable
as
styles.
9. Or
"belonging,"
as
Terry
Gates calls it in his
response
to
question
number two of MENC's Vision 2020
project.
1 0.
Actually,
the last of these
probably maps
itself onto
both the structural and the social dimensions of
music: that
is,
it is
important
to
knowing
and
pattern-
ing
in both the
cognitive
and the social worlds
(not
that the two can be
disentangled).
1 1 . Charles Keil and Steven
Feld,
Music Grooves
(Chi-
cago: University
of
Chicago Press, 1994).
1 2.
Christopher
Small makes a similar
point
in his book
Musicking (
1
998),
where he discusses
(after Bateson)
the
importance
of
first-, second-,
and third-order
relationships
to musical
experience.
The
emphasis
on
cross-modality
that I
attempt
to introduce here is
nicely
elaborated in
George
LakofT and Mark John-
son's
important book, Philosophy
in the Flesh: The
Embodied Mind and its
Challenge
to Western
Thought (New
York: Basic
Books, 1999).
62 Philosophy
of Music Education Review
13. Immanuel Kant,
The
Critique of Judgement,
trans.
James Creed Meredith
(Oxford:
Oxford
University
Press, 1952).
I
explore
Kant in
my Philosophical
Perspectives
on Music
(New
York: Oxford
University
Press, 1998)74-91.
14. I have
explored
these in
my
book
Philosophical
Perspectives
on Music
through
the
writings
of David
Burrows, 283-93.
15. I venture to
say
that such fundamental musical
quali-
ties as movement, gesture, timbre, rhythm,
and
tension/release are each
profoundly
and
inextricably
bodily achievements.
16. "A
Somatic,
'Here-And-Now' Semantic:
Music,
Body,
and Self." Bulletin of the Council for Research
in Music Education, no. 144
(Spring 2000):
45-60.
1 7. John
Shepherd
and Peter
Wicke,
Music and Cultural
Theory (Polity Press, 1997). My
review of the book
appears
in the Council
for
Research in Music Educa-
tion Bulletin 1 40
(Spring,
1
999):
77-8 1 .
Although
this
is not the
place
to
pursue
the matter in
detail,
this
claim to
uniqueness clearly requires
an
exploration
of
the
ways
sound intended and
perceived
as musical
differs from sound that
supports things
like
linguistic
utterance and noise. I have
attempted
to
explore
these
in
my "Sound, Society,
and Music
'Proper',"
Philoso-
phy of
Music Education Review
2,
No. 1
(Spring
1
994):
1 4-24. In the
end,
the continuities and connec-
tions
among
these modes of sonorous
experience may
be at least as
interesting
and
revealing
as their
difTerences-in which
case,
some
might
be inclined to
characterize
my
claim to
uniqueness
as an
exaggera-
tion.
However,
the
uniqueness
I claim is for the
articulation between sound and
body,
not for musical
experience per
se. The reference to a
"body-sound
interface" I borrow from Eleanor Stublev.
1 8. Both "richness" and
"complexity" get
at
important
dimensions of what I have in mind here.
However,
in
certain
respects,
richness is the better of the two.
Much of what Westerners
casually regard
as
simple
is
extraordinarily complex.
And much of what has been
written about
complexity, by
L. B.
Meyer
and
others,
for
instance, takes into account
only
a
syntactical
dimension.
Complexity
so construed is not at all what
I have in mind here.
19. The reader
might
wish to consult the
chapter
on
phenomenology
in
my Philosophical Perspectives
on
Music, 254-303.
Stubley
is
among
those who write
most
movingly
on this
being-in-the-body idea.
20. In Music Grooves
(with
S.
Feld).
21. T.S. Eliot: ". . .
you
are the music while the music
lasts." From
"Dry Salvages"
in Four
Quartets (New
York:
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988).
Note that
because of this
strong
link to
identity,
music is an
important part
of the
machinery by
which
community
is created and
sustained,
an act that is
simultaneously
inclusive and exclusive
(a point
which should be
applied
to the third of
my suggested
additions to
Sparshott's
list of basic human
tendencies, above).
22. This idea of music as an ethical
space
or ethical
encounter is one I take
up
in
considerably
more detail
in a
chapter
in the new Handbook
of
Research in
Music
Teaching
and
Learning,
Richard Colwell and
Carol
Richardson,
eds.
(Oxford,
New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 63-84, entitled
"Educating
Musically."
It is also a concern that
Stubley
takes
up
in her
"Play
and the Field of Musical
Performance,"
Critical
Reflections
on Music Education:
Proceedings
of
the Second International
Symposium
on the Philos-
ophy of
Music
Education,
in L. Bartel and D.
Elliott,
eds.
(Toronto:
Canadian Music Education Research
Centre, 1996): 358-76;
and
"Being
in the
Body,
Being
in the Sound: A Tale of
Modulating Identities,"
Journal
of
Aesthetic Education
32, No.
4, (Winter
1998):
93-105. Similar concerns also
figure
in her
forthcoming article, "Modulating
Identities and
Musical
Heritage: Improvisation
as a Site for Self and
Cultural Re-Generation."
23. On
Stubley'
s
view, music-making
constitutes no less
than
"identity
in the making."
24. I
hope
it is clear that this is what motivated
my
resistance to the
people-value-music formulation.
25.
Emphasis
here is on
"primordial";
in
contrast,
I
hope,
to the reason-driven
logos
from which the
pejorative
"logocentrism"
derives its
meaning.
26. Lest these references to
genuineness
and sound
claiming
to be music be misconstrued as essentialist
or
elitist,
some clarification
may
be useful.
By
"sound
claiming
to be music" I mean
only
those sounds
that,
while musical for others are
not,
or not
yet,
con-
structed
musically by
me. And the word
"genuine"
here refers not to some
quality
of "the music" but
only
to
my experience.
Muzak is one
example
of
sound
claiming
to be music:
rarely
if ever do I
experi-
ence it
musically;
it is most
often, in
my experience,
a
noisy
and
irritating
intrusion.
My
intent here is
primarily
to stress the
fragility
of musical
experience
with the
qualities
I have claimed for it here. It is
decidedly
not
my
intent to
impute
such
experience
to
certain musics in virtue of
supposedly
intrinsic
qualities, qualities
in which other musics
might
necessarily be found inherently deficient.
27.
Sparshott,
"Aesthetics of Music-Limits and
Grounds."
28 . Lest I be
misunderstood, my understanding
of authen-
ticity
is
emphatically
not a
rigid, practice-governed,
insular matter that manifests itself in absolute
right-
ness or
wrongness. Acting rightly
in musical
praxis
is
a matter of
getting things right
within human domains
that are
constantly evolving,
whose boundaries are
always being
contested and redefined. I want no
part
of accounts of
authenticity
that act as
ideological
straight jackets,
that treat
hybrid vigor
as a
defect,
or
that fail to
preserve
a
place
of
prominence
within
musical traditions for
creativity
and
divergence.
I
Symposium
63
need to make one further
point,
unrelated to the
previous
one
except through my
reference to
praxis.
I have
deliberately
avoided
labeling
the views ad-
vanced here
"praxial"
or "aesthetic" because the terms
are so
widely misrepresented
and misunderstood and
because debates over the merits of the two
positions
so often deteriorate into
ideological struggles
rather
than the kind of discussions that
genuinely
advance
our
understandings
of music and music education.
However,
for those to whom labels are
important,
I
want to
acknowledge
that the views advanced here are
fundamentally praxial
in orientation.
29. I
hope
I make clear here that what I mean is that
asking why people
value music is like
asking why
they
talk-or
why they
are interested in each other.
Again,
this is
part
of the reason I wanted to
begin by
challenging
the
question.